viii, 300 pages : 24 cm

"It's accepted wisdom today that human beings have permanently damaged the natural world causing extinction, deforestation, pollution, and of course climate change. But in Inheritors of the Earth, biologist Chris D. Thomas shows that this obscures a more hopeful truth--we're also helping nature grow and change. Human cities and mass agriculture have created new places for enterprising animals and plants to live, and our activities have stimulated evolutionary change in virtually every population of living species. Most remarkably, Thomas shows, humans may well have raised the rate at which new species are formed to the highest level in the history of our planet. Drawing on the success stories of diverse species, from the ochre-colored comma butterfly to the New Zealand pukeko, Thomas overturns the accepted story of declining biodiversity on Earth. In so doing, he questions why we resist new forms of life, and why we see ourselves as unnatural. Ultimately, he suggests that if life on Earth can recover from the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, it can survive the onslaughts of a technological age"--Jacket flap

Includes bibliographical references (pages 256-282) and index

Part I. Opportunity. Prologue : Gains and losses ; Biogenesis -- Part II. New Pangea. Prelude ; Fall and rise ; Never had it so good ; Steaming ahead ; Pangea reunited -- Part III. Genesis six. Prelude ; Heirs to the world ; Evolution never gives up ; The Pangean archipelago ; Hybrid -- Part IV. Anthropocene Park. Prelude ; The new natural ; Noah's Earth -- Epilogue : One million years AD

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